Periscope as a tool for advisors

Periscope is a great and very unique live video streaming tool. I say unique not because there are not that many tools, there are a lot of streaming tools. What’s really interesting is its ability to directly integrate with Twitter in real time.

Periscope is an app you can put on your Android or iOS device. And it allows you to shoot live video and broadcast it to Twitter, as well as those would be captured and of course shared for review later. Some things to think about: Unlike YouTube, where you can build longer form or structured videos, think about the fact that you’re doing this on mobile and most will consume it on mobile. And so you may want your length and format to be fairly quick, at least at the beginning, as you learn how your audience reacts. There are some really neat things you can do to understand how your audience reacts, but first let’s think about some strategy.

If you’re using Twitter, you know your followers and what some of their preferences are. It would help to take a closer look at who has engaged with you, perhaps tweets or topical areas that have done very well for you on Twitter, with high engagement, lots of re-tweets, lots of likes, lots of comments, because you could potentially explore taking those topics and identifying, “Is there a way for me to do a Periscope live video?” For example, I was recently at a financial services conference this summer and we had a digital hub set up to coach on more advanced social media topics. And as a set of advisors came into the hub to have a discussion with us, some of them were very versatile, very experienced on social media and, on a whim, they had a conversation about fiduciary responsibility and retirement plans and retirement techniques with clients on Periscope right in the hub, right there on the spot. And they spent about five or six minutes passing the phone and having a conversation with their audience. And of course they had several thousand collectively followers.

And so this nearly went viral for them and was a really creative and unique use for them being together at an event where they’re normally from different corners of the country. And so you can imagine, you can think these scenario of events you’ll be at, topical areas where you have peers, that you have conversations, perhaps you’re presenting at conferences, or participating at conferences and wanna have your own side bar at an event. So these are all great ways that you can do short form, concise video streaming that will be shared to your Twitter audience, as well as stored there for replay.

Now there’s some interesting things you can do with the Periscope app that’s really great. And one of those, as I mentioned earlier, figuring out who responds to your videos is that you can watch the likes and comments in real time on Periscope and even respond right there on camera, so to speak. As you see them, you can respond to them verbally to really drive folks into following your Periscope videos, especially if this is gonna be a regular thing for you. So certainly posting it to Twitter is great. There are some privacy settings that allow you to location tag, where you’re not listing the exact precise coordinates, so you can set the app to do a geographic region, so, “I’m in Boston, I’m in Cleveland, I’m in Miami, I’m in New York,” versus a specific street corner or address, which could raise some more privacy concerns. So this allows you to tie it regionally into Twitter, and as you know, with Twitter they tailor tweets to folks that expose their location, so this gives you a chance to reach a new audience.

So, very interesting and compelling capabilities on this app. It works for both Android and iOS, and you’ll find that you can first start by installing the app and connecting your account and doing some watching and some homework, just like we talk about with other social networks, where we suggest that you invest the time and energy in identifying who good participants on social media are, and also looking at potentially negative or unsuccessful attempts to use social media to get a sense for how this will work for you.

As always, we welcome your feedback and questions.

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Neal Quon

Neal Quon began his career in the financial services industry in 1997 and is a graduate of Texas Tech University with a Bachelor of Sciences degree in Family Financial Planning. Being an independent advisor gives Neal an understanding of the challenges financial advisors face when selecting the tools to best meet the needs of their clients. He helped establish the technology for a Texas-based Registered Investment Advisor as he also built his initial book of business.
Neal also bridged many channels in financial services, with a consistent focus on the front office of operations. He has worked for and consulted for many of the the industry’s leading service providers. This includes Albridge Solutions and CashEdge, Inc. Neal also directly coached financial advisors, serving as the Practice Consulting Manager for the Pacific Life group of broker dealers prior to their sale to LPL.
In founding QuonWarrene with Blane Warrene, he brought client-facing technology expertise and regularly speaks and advises on practice management issues today.
View all posts by Neal Quon